1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an ink jet recording apparatus.
2. Related Art
In the related art, as a method of forming a coated film having metallic luster on printed matter, foil stamp printing using print ink including gold dust or silver dust manufactured from brass or aluminum fine particles as a pigment or a metal foil, a heat transfer system using a metal foil, or the like has been used. However, according to the method, the forming of fine patterns or the application thereof to a curved surface portion is difficult. In addition, during the foil stamp printing, on-demand performance is low, the support for the multi-product production is difficult, and metal tone printing having gradation cannot be performed.
Therefore, various application examples of the ink jet printing are presented, and as an application example, metallic printing is performed, development of the ink having metallic luster has progressed. The ink jet method is excellent in that the method can be applied to the forming of a fine pattern or the recording on a curved surface portion. As the metallic ink used in the ink jet method, ink for ink jet recording that contains a metal pigment (scale-like pigment) such as an aluminum is disclosed in JP-A-2013-227454 and JP-A-2013-199034.
The metal pigment disclosed in the patent document described above may present uneven behavior in the ink jet recording apparatus or in a portion near the nozzle of the ink jet head, caused by the special shapes or particle diameters thereof. In this case, the flowability of the ink containing the metal pigment in the ink jet recording apparatus decreases and thus the ejection of the ink becomes unstable. Particularly, as the interval of the ejection time of the ink ejected from a specific nozzle decreases, the decrease in the ejection stability of the ink becomes considerable.